الوسم: English

English is a crazy language

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes
but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese
yet the plural of moose should never be meese
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice
yet the plural of house is houses, not hice
If the plural of man is always called men
why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?I

If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet
and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?I
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth
why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?I
Then one may be that, and three would be those
yet hat in the plural would never be hose
and the plural of cat is cats, not cose
We speak of a brother and also of brethren
but though we say mother, we never say methren
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him
but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim

Some other reasons to be grateful if you grew up
speaking English:I

The bandage was wound around the wound

The farm was used to produce produce

The dump was so full that it had to refuse more
refuse

We must polish the Polish furniture

He could lead if he would get the lead out
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the
desert

Since there is no time like the present, he thought
it was time to present the present

At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of
a bass drum

When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes

I did not object to the object

The insurance was invalid for the invalid

There was a row among the oarsmen about how to
row

They were too close to the door to close it

The buck does funny things when the does are
present

A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer
line
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow
to sow

The wind was too strong to wind the sail

After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got
number

Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a
tear

I had to subject the subject to a series of tests

How can I intimate this to my most intimate
friend?

I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt

Screwy pronunciations can mess up your mind! For
example: If you have a rough cough, climbing can be
tough when going through the bough on a tree!

Let’s face it, English is a crazy language. There is
no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple
nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins weren’t invented in England.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its
paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly,
boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither
from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that
writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t
groce and hammers don’t ham?

Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not
one amend?

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of
all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a
humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking
English should be committed to an asylum for the
verbally insane. In what other language do people
recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck
and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet
that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be
the same, while a wise man and a wiseguy are

opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in
which you fill in a form by filling it out and in
which an alarm goes off by going on.